Connect

Below is an article I wrote for the Redemptive Presence, our church newsletter. Though it was interesting and worth sharing…
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Facebook. Twitter. TXT. Google. MySpace. Delivr. Digg. Blog. Del.icio.us. Flickr. StumpleUpon. RSS. YouTube. Snapfish. Pandora. Picasa. Podcasting. And on and on the list goes. The internet has redefined just about every aspect of our lives and filled it with services and websites from companies with either misspelled words or just made up words entirely. I remember my freshman year of college when I got my first email address.

Now? My son, Jeremiah, was born on September 23rd of this year and had an email address within two hours of being born. And as for me, I start to shake if I haven’t checked my email in the last five minutes. From my phone I can check stock prices (you know, if I’m masochistic enough to do that!), send text messages, make restaurant reservations, record audio, watch tv shows, shop at Amazon and play games. And I can do all of these things while I listen to music. Someone even told me recently that my phone can make calls as well!

Psalm 46:10 tells us to “Be still and know that I am God.” Seems harder and harder to do when the noise keeps getting louder and louder. Should we push away from all the noise and the constant connection? Besides that, doesn’t it seem sometimes that all this communication actually distances people rather than drawing them together?

So how should we respond to all these services? Should we embrace them or run away from them? Ed Stetzer, a leading missiologist, wrote an interesting blog article that got me thinking about this topic. You can check out his blog – http://tinyurl.com/6cyjy8 – if you are interested.

On the one hand, these services allow me to communicate with friends that I haven’t since high school. When Jeremiah was born, we uploaded pictures that night for all the world to see. On the other hand, have you ever tried to go on vacation and turn off your phone? It’s really a lot harder to unplug than it sounds!

As a church, we can’t use all of these services, but we are moving toward using some of them. The great thing about these services is that they can be two-way streets. We’re not just putting out information and hoping someone stumbles upon us. These services allow us to create a conversation and foster community as we people to interact. In the coming weeks, you will be hearing more about how we as a church plan to use these services. For now, we already have a Facebook page and we just started writing tweets on Twitter this past week (http://twitter.com/glasgowchurch – come follow us!).

But as we move in this direction, we want this to be more than us sharing information. We want us a conversation – a chance to hear from you. So, won’t you come join the conversation?